Vale Decem
by Every Shade of Blue
Summary: Title refers to the music Murray Gold wrote for the Tenth Doctor's regeneration scene. It's Latin for 'Goodbye, Ten'. Summary: In the parallel world, Rose remembers when the Doctor came to say goodbye to her before she he regenerated. Also gives more of an intro and an ending to her life with 10.5.
1. Chapter 1

**Vale Decem**

"Tell you what… I bet you're going to have a really great year."

Every time Rose Tyler woke in the middle of the night, the words were echoing through her head, always those same words.

"I bet you're going to have a really great year."

She didn't understand it. It was as though some long-forgotten memory was hiding just below the surface of her waking mind, trying desperately to make itself known. But she just couldn't place it. It was the same way every time she tried: she was close, so very close – but at the last minute, just when she was positive that she would do it this time, that she would finally remember, it would slip away and disappear. Every time.

* * *

_1 January 2007, 12:01 A.M._

"Happy New Year, Rose!"

She stifled a yawn as her father pulled her into a tight hug. "Happy New Year, Dad."

"You all right, love?"

She smiled. "I'm fine. Just haven't been sleeping well, I guess." She yawned again. "I think I'm gonna turn in now, actually."

Pete nodded, kissed her on the forehead. "'Night, sweetheart."

"Good night, Dad. 'Night, Mum. Happy New Year," she called to her mother on the other side of the room.

"Happy New Year, Rose! Sleep tight."

* * *

_1:42 A.M._

Rose woke suddenly from her dream. At least, she thought she had been dreaming. It was all slipping away so fast…

"I bet you're going to have a really great year."

She gasped and sat up in bed as it all came rushing back. Burying her face in her hands, she started to cry.

"Rose?" It was her mother. Rose realized she must have been just going to bed. "What's wrong, sweetheart?"

"I'm not sure, I just… I had this dream." A sob escaped her. "I _remember_…"

Jackie frowned in confusion. "Remember what?"

"The Doctor… I – I saw the Doctor."

"The Doctor? What happened?"

"On New Year's, 2005... That was before I had met him. I didn't recognize him, I didn't even know him yet. That must be why I forgot…" She shook her head, looking more and more upset as the details of the dream – the memory – came back to her. "He was hurt, but… I thought he'd just been out partying somewhere, had too much to drink. I wished him happy New Year, and he asked me what year it was. I told him, and he – he said, 'I bet you're going to have a really great year.'"

"But why is that such a bad thing?" Jackie asked, trying to be reassuring. "That sounds nice."

"Because he was _hurt_, Mum. I think… I think he was dying."

"But he regenerates, doesn't he? He changes instead of dying. He'll be fine, love."

"That's just it: he _changes_. He won't be my Doctor anymore. _My_ Doctor is going to die." She wiped tears off of her face. "He came back to say goodbye."

* * *

_5 July 2008_

She had spent so long trying to find him. And now, after all that time and all those worlds, after the greatest of adventures, he was leaving her behind again. He was leaving her here, in the wrong world, _without him_. Again. And he was trying to leave behind this other Doctor, this man who looked just like him, but who _couldn't_ be him, because he had killed all the daleks, and the real Doctor would never have done that.

"But he's not you!"

His quiet response was heartbreaking: "He needs you. That's very me."

"But it's better than that though. Don't you see what he's trying to give you? Tell her, go on," Donna urged from where she stood behind the Doctor.

Rose turned to look at the other Doctor: the Almost-Doctor. He explained softly, "I look like him, I think like him, same memory, same thoughts, same everything — except I've only got one heart."

Rose thought she felt her own heart skip a few beats. "Which means?"

"I'm part human. Specifically the aging part. I'll grow old and never regenerate," he answered. "I've only got one life, Rose Tyler. I could spend it with you, if you want."

It was something she had dreamed of for almost as long as she'd known him, something that she had known she could never have – and now it was happening. It was all happening right here, right now.

It was too good to be true.

"You'll grow old at the same time as me."

"Together."

She knew she should be satisfied with this. It was far more than she had ever felt possible, and she should be happier than anyone had any right to be. But there was just one more thing that needed to happen, _one thing _she needed to be sure of before the real Doctor left… for good.

"All right, both of you, answer me this: When I last stood on this beach, on the worst day of my life, what was the last thing you said to me?" The real Doctor was on her right, the human Doctor on her left. She turned to the right. "Go on, say it."

The sadness in his eyes nearly made her cry. "I said, 'Rose Tyler'."

"Yeah? And how was that sentence gonna end?"

His response was so quiet she could barely hear it. "Does it need saying?"

Rose turned to her left, to the human Doctor. "And you? What was the end of that sentence?"

He looked her in the eyes, he leaned forward, he whispered three words in her ear:

"_I love you."_

* * *

The TARDIS had vanished some time ago, taking the Doctor with it. She would never see him again. She knew beyond a doubt that this time, he was never coming back. And she couldn't say how she knew, but she was sure that he was going to die soon. Sometime, not too far in the future, something would happen to him, something he couldn't survive. When it did, he would take his TARDIS and land in the early morning hours of the first of January 2005, just so he could say goodbye to her before he changed. Before he died. He would see her one last time, in the only way he could. But she would never see him.

* * *

He was still holding her hand: the other Doctor. Rose supposed she would have to call him… what? John Smith? He was human, after all. If he was going to have a human life, he needed a human name.

"I _am_ him, you know. All those adventures, all of the things you did and saw, they're all in my head. Everything that you loved about him… it's in me as well."

A small smile tugged at Rose's lips as she stared out at the waters of the bay. "You don't have a TARDIS. You'll have to get a normal house. One that's the same size on the inside as it is on the outside." She laughed suddenly. "You'll have to get a mortgage. Do you remember the last time I said that?"

"You said we could share one."

She nodded, still grinning at the sea. He really did remember.

Reaching over to take her other hand in his, he turned her until she was facing him. "Is that offer still on the table?"

Her breath caught in her throat as she looked up at him. He was the Doctor. _Her_ Doctor.

"Yes."


	2. Chapter 2: Epilogue

**Epilogue**

Donna Jameson, nee Tyler-Smith stood in the warm, sunny graveyard, staring at a single, freshly-filled grave. It didn't seem right that the sun should be shining so brightly, so cheerfully, when the world had just lost two such wonderful people. She was getting older now – she would turn sixty in just a few short months – but she could still recall with ease the happy memories of her childhood. She had grown up listening to fantastical tales of the things her mother and father had done as they traveled through time and space in a blue box. And she knew in her heart that they were true. She always had.

Standing silently behind Donna were her four children. There were the twins, Rose and Martha, standing side-by-side ,each with an arm around the other's shoulders. It was hard to believe that they were in their thirties already. Near them was Jack, who had just recently turned thirty. Donna smiled slightly as she recalled the way her parents had chuckled at Jack's despair that he was no longer twenty-nine, especially considering who his namesake had been. And next to Jack was the youngest, Sarah Jane, still just twenty-eight.

"It's hard to believe that they're really gone," Sarah Jane said softly.

No one answered; they simply nodded silently as a faint gust of wind swirled through the grass, smelling of salt from the nearby sea. Behind them, the sun sank closer to the horizon, painting a deep scarlet in the skies over Dårlig Ulv Stranden: Bad Wolf Bay.

* * *

JOHN SMITH

18 APRIL 1975 - 13 JUNE 2069

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ROSE TYLER-SMITH

22 SEPTEMBER 1986 - 12 JUNE 2069

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~HAPPILY MARRIED FOR 60 YEARS~


End file.
